ARCHIVE

James Pritchett is my first guest on “All Things Cage” who almost doesn’t need an introduction, as he’s the author of The Music of John Cage, published by Cambridge University Press in 1993, well known to Cage enthusiasts and still the only comprehensive survey of all of Cage’s music. But his earlier doctoral dissertation, The development of chance techniques in the music of John Cage, 1951-1956, completed in 1988 for NYU, is every bit as useful, being a detailed study of the processes Cage used in his seminal chance compositions. James and I talk a bit about his research at Cage’s NYC loft in the mid-1980s, and a lot about his latest project, writing the liner notes for a new CD due out in early summer from Mode Records that features a little-known arrangement by Morton Feldman of Cage’s Cheap Imitation for flute, glockenspiel, and piano. And, courtesy of Mode Records, we’ll listen to a movement!